Dual Boot Ubuntu cant remove loader

Night Hawk said:

When first going to set up ubuntu on one drive with EasyBCD back in 2008 one thing I learned about the ubuntu version of GParted that comes up is to select the manual option and make the root partition the mount point &quot;/&quot; using the edit partition option plus check off the &quot;Grub isn't installed in bootsector&quot; box to prevent the Windows mbr from being changed.<br />
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How Grub ended up on the mbr when installing ubuntu onto a flash drive is still kind of a mystery following previous steps proved successful. But the startup repair still did it's job in restoring the mbr entries for 7 when performed more recently with 7. It never hurts to schedule the checkdisk tool either in case any bad sectors or misplaced boot information needs correction.<br />
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Typically when Grub is installed the option to boot any Windows installation is seen there to select however. Even with Grub however there still should be an option to make 7 the default OS when following the wiki for that. Here however I solve the accidental Grub in mbr problems by seeing any distro go onto a vhd in the Oracle Virtual Box since each one often ends up being a temp install to start with.

Yes the manual partition is the way to go, in 2008 it was grub legacy now it is grub2 and ext4 since Karmic. Easybcd 2 beta can read those and work fine or so I've heard, but as you suggest you have to keep grub out of the mix for sure. In Ubuntu though if a person installs grub and everything is booting there is a program called startup manager that will rewrite grub to what you want for a default boot, and also adjust the countdown to boot.

In the end what I see are people just not realizing that 1st they should have a legit install dvd/thumb of W7 to make repairs if needed and the disc or thumb of any other install. These tools alone will allow you to recover anything you need especially a Linux ISO and reinstall if needed. Also everybody should have a hirens disc as well to find the keys and all the other killer programs on those discs.

I primarily use gparted but I have discs for about 3 or 4 other partitioners, supergrub, and grub, and a stack of Linux ISO's, and the .exe install, ISO and 2 DVD's for W7. I have yet had to ask anybody for help at the UF or post any thread other then a p2p reminder of a release.

I am a re-installer at heart, if it takes longer to fix it then reinstall I don't hesitate to install, I have all my important data on a external so I can reinstall within about 5 minutes if needed.

actually ms-sys isn't in the repo's anymore but I have seen people use lilo. Good job in knowing this stuff it can be a challenge to get this stuff fixed at times.

Nighthawk, i like your approach.

Through a series of mishaps, i find myself with Ubuntu 10.10 and XP on the same machine. I also have the Windows 7 loader which obscures the presence of XP from Grub. There is a long series of things that i did to get to this point, but suffice it to say, Seven could not be made to do what XP now does for me, so it was installed, tried for a week and discarded.

I ultimately downloaded a very nice ECDeditor package from the same wonderful folks who make the Win 7 64 repair disk image available and now i have a quasi dual boot machine which gives me the choice of going either directly to XP, or to Grub where I can pick one of the several editions of 10.10 or Windows seven which of course won't work.

the advice from some places is to do a low-level reformat. My guess is that whoever wrote that has no idea in the world what a low-level format actually is and only means a sector by sector reformat instead of the usual quick directory destruction.

in any case, is there some way to get rid of the windows seven loader altogther that doesn't involve so much violence?

Hi jf,

I am sure you know more about Linux than I do.

What exactly do you mean by win 7 loader - I assume you mean bootmgr?

Normally running

bootsect.exe /nt52 driveletter:

will do

You can run that command from easybcd powerconsole.

Windows 7 loader is the name Grub, the multiple boot system, gives it. From touring the web, it also looks like Grub isn't alone on this. it appears to be a more elaborate MBR system than XP used. it also appears that this is what ECD editors edit.


my favorite choice would be to totally remove it, replace the XP MBR, rerun grub and go back to the simple system i had originally, or possibly get a good enough grip on the ECD edit to use that with an either/or choice without a path to grub. maybe what i should be thinking of is keeping ecd or the windows 7 loader or whatever it is an get rid of grub. but then I'm familiar with grub and not the other thing.

thanks for your thoughts, john

Linux - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

Instructions for 7 are the same as for Vista.

might work. i guess ebcd is the right acronym. I knew the vista scheme was the same setup as seven now has, but.......

thanks

john